5 out of 5

How slick does a writer have to be to pull off the parent/child-flashback-teaches-an-applicable-present-day-lesson trope without it coming across as cheesy or forced?  Tom Taylor slick, ladies and gents.

Squirrel Girl bursts in (as if this series needed any more awesome characters) and demands that Wolverine assist in tracking down a rogue girl Wolvie had inadvertently rousted during a scuffle.  Also: Squirrel Girl brings a live wolverine with her, because that’s how the world makes sense to her.

This miniature quest – a perfect mid-arc one-shot stop – offers Laura some insight on how to make her relationship with Gabby (her clone, functioning as something of a daughter in this arrangement) evolve, and also, of course, provides a nigh-illegal amount of hilarity.  Might it also act as winky foreshadowing to following story ‘the box?’. Say it’s true, Tom, say it’s true.

I was a little hesitant to see a non-David Lopez artist at the reins (and I still hope to see his take on SG…), but Marcio Takara proves a perfectly capable match for the story’s pacing and style.  Her character models are a little more cartoonish than Lopez’s, but the comic timing and acting or both on point, and the comparative looseness of the look might work better with the story’s goofiness anyway.

Thanks, Tom.